I have no idea how to justify the following statement, and I have this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach as I type, but I’m just going to go ahead and say it: MySpace, which in my opinion has recharacterized this generation’s definition of a misspent youth, has become an outlet for some of the most forward-thinking music in the scene today.

Whether this music is perennially “good” doesn’t matter — it’s new, it’s weird and you can dance to it. Whether it’s the screamo-techno fusion of Breathe Carolina, the three clearly underage girls rapping about getting wasted known as Millionaires, or whatever Jeffree Star is (look him/her up — Star defies description), all of the aforementioned artists have graced the MySpace “Top Artists” list at some point over the past summer. Like I said, musical substance is irrelevant; their unique style has earned them hundreds of thousands of friends (which, of course, is MySpace’s unit of measurement, superseding the old-fashion idea of “fans”).

My first real-life experience of this emerging scene was with Hyper Crush, one of the most prominent artists of the MySpace group (and yes, with Hyper Crush, they can be called artists — Millionaires … not so much). Their music is kind of electro, kind of hip-hop, kind of disco and fully decked out in neon colors. The best way to explain it is to just start at the beginning of the show: a sample from “Duck Hunt.” Yes, the video game. But their image couldn’t be further from their sound, as the band cleverly juxtaposes ’80s style with the newest wave of new-wave dance music (yes, I used the word juxtapose in a MySpace article), all directed at an audience who is young enough to think Devo is a Justice song.

But within minutes of hearing Hyper Crush’s first song at the Vanguard in Hollywood, I understood why they were leaders in the MySpace popularity contest. Donny and Holly front the band with all sorts of rhymes, not to mention Holly’s rather impressive singing voice, and Preston serves as the group’s lone musician, fiddling around with computers, turntables and, most importantly, a painted keytar that resembles a neon Jackson Pollack. And when it comes to Hyper Crush, forget all my talk about “good” music being irrelevant on the Internet. They rocked it.

The band is about to embark on a North American tour with major-label veterans the Medic Droid and Chronic Future and seems to be headed toward a Panic at the Disco-esque transition from MySpace to mainstream, possibly followed by avoidance of talks about their discovery (similar to Panic). However, it seems the “Internet band” stigma is fading in this day and age, because it’s hard to argue with 65,000 friends … I mean fans.

Check out all of Dave’s uploads at yourhere.mtv.com…